Developing EFL Learners Vocabulary by Reading English Comprehension in EFL Classroom

Vocabulary development by reading comprehension is an important issue in case of English language learning. There is always an interconnection between vocabulary and reading comprehension or text and it is unavoidable. There are a lot of ways to develop vocabulary. After judging these ways researchers have shown three ways of effective vocabulary development (Mezynski, 1983; Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986): (a) wide reading, (b) direct instruction, (c) building an interest in words. Wide and independent reading is also important to develop the vocabulary of the learners because through this they come into contact of new vocabularies. Words like serenity, contaminate, stabilize, phenomenon, and anxiety are "necessary to make critical distinctions in the physical and social world in which we live" (Stanovich, 1992) and which help learners to develop sensitivity to the subtleties in language and thought (Olson, 1986). This paper aims at examining whether reading English comprehension helps to develop vocabulary knowledge of the EFL learners in EFL classroom. To find out how reading English comprehension help to develop vocabulary of the EFL learners two things are checked: 1) whether the learners are trying to understand the meaning of the word at the time of reading comprehension, and 2) after knowing the meaning of the words whether there is any change in understanding the comprehension passage. The data was collected through mcq tests and twenty participants were selected from a second semester EFL classroom of a private university. The collected data reveals that reading comprehension is an effective way for lexical development. This research also reveals the importance of regular reading for the progress of word stocks.